Knicks dump Sixers

NEW YORK — The next eight weeks of their season boils down to a fight to the finish, with the 76ers attempting to sneak into the playoffs as the eighth seed.

Sunday at Madison Square Garden, the Sixers got a jump start on that fight.

They showed spirit when things got chippy. They didn’t back down from a daunting deficit, or a couple jabs to the chest. They still lost – 99-93, to the New York Knicks – but it could’ve, and probably should’ve, been uglier.

That’s difficult to fathom, considering the Sixers (22-32) lost their fifth straight game overall, matching a season-long skid, fell into a tie for last place in the Atlantic Division and dropped to 10 games under .500 for the first time since the first month of Doug Collins’ tenure as their coach.

Granted, this one was bereft of beauty. At the very least, it demonstrated that the Sixers – who own the second-fewest road victories in the Eastern Conference – aren’t going to bow as they bid to crawl into the playoff race. Still, it turned into an ugly rivalry game that went New York’s way.

At the root of it all was a third-quarter box out.

Attempting to beat Spencer Hawes for an offensive rebound, New York’s Carmelo Anthony slapped Hawes in the head with the back of his right hand. Hawes confronted Anthony after the whistle, Tyson Chandler intervened and two-hand shoved Hawes away from Anthony … and then everybody got involved.

Technical fouls were issued to Anthony and Chandler. A Flagrant 1 went to Hawes.

The shoving match fueled a spurt from the Sixers, during which they trimmed the Knicks’ once-hefty 20-point lead to eight, inside the final minute of the third quarter. And for most of the fourth, the Sixers teetered on the brink of making a run.

They never did, at least not until the final minute of the fourth quarter. With a Hawes follow of a Jrue Holiday miss, it was a five-point game, at 98-93, with 45 seconds to go. But Evan Turner clanged his 10-footer in the lane to close it out.

A positive development, in the losing effort, was the the Sixers having Thad Young at their disposal for the first time in seven games. It had to be considered an upgrade to their frontcourt, even if Young’s strained left hamstring wasn’t 100 percent. And it showed, with Young slow to get up and down the floor in the early going.

The bum hammy didn’t stop Young from grabbing two rebounds in the first minute of the game, as many boards as Hawes had against Miami a night earlier.

The first physical altercation in a game filled with them involved Evan Turner.

Turner, at the 2:30 mark of the first quarter, didn’t like that he was called for a traveling violation. And he probably had a case, with New York’s Amare Stoudemire jabbing him at the time. So Turner let his voice be heard … and got a technical as a result.

The Sixers trailed, 24-22, after one quarter and the Knicks made sure it didn’t get any closer than that.

New York started the second quarter on a 7-0 run. By the time Pablo Prigioni knocked down a fallaway jumper on the baseline, as the shot clock expired, the Knicks had mounted a 15-2 run en route to a 52-40 edge at the break.

After halftime, New york picked up right where it left off.

Iman Shumpert and Raymond Felton hit consecutive 3-point attempts, and Felton converted a driving layup, giving the Knicks eight points in 83 seconds. It was enough to force Collins into calling a timeout.

By then, it was a 60-40 deficit for the Sixers and there wasn’t much more for them to do.

Except instigate a couple verbal and physical barbs with the Knicks, perhaps.

In all fairness to the Sixers, Hawes had no business getting a Flagrant 1 foul called on him for his involvement in that third-quarter scrum with Anthony. He got slapped in the back of the head and approached Anthony about it. Maybe his words were reprehensible, but so was Chandler’s shove of Hawes, which drew only a technical.

Maybe it sparked something for the Sixers, though, because they followed with an 11-3 run that cut the Knicks’ lead from what was onc 20 points to single digits. And they closed out the third quarter that way, trimming their deficit to 76-67.